


'As it was, shall it ever be...'

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s12e02 Mamma Mia, M/M, angst and uncertainty, episode coda, implied wincest, little bit of nothing that goes nowhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 08:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8365897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: Sam finds Dean sitting in the kitchen floor.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is just a little bit of nothing. Just a quiet moment between the boys and some of the uncertainty they feel, mostly just indulging my busted up heart after seeing Dean sitting in the kitchen floor drinking his beer and looking at those photos like a little boy lost. Poor baby.
> 
> Title comes from Heart's 'Lost Angel' that was playing in the aforementioned scene.

Sam had dozed, laying in his bed, staring up at the spin of the ceiling fan while his mind spun around the sudden axial turn his entire life had taken. 

He could still feel Mary’s arms around him, the fragility of her small body against the bulk and breadth of his own, the way her warmth had permeated him, driving away a chill in his bones that he was only now aware of by its absence. He wanted to hold onto that feeling, let it fill him and mellow in his veins and become part of him, finally easing the unknown edges of that part of his existence that had started with her. But the warmth warred with the festering, unspoken truths of the sins for which she had yet to answer that he kept trying to shove away and bury down under the weight of a past no one had the power to change, and the darkness, too, that was all his own and rooted in his very soul.

He opened dry, bleary eyes to the clock reading nearly half past one and an empty bed. While he recognized the need for caution, maybe even curtailment, in any overt affection between them, his heart thumped uncomfortably hard at the idea that Dean would be in another bed, alone, or on the couch, in an effort to keep Mary in the dark about her sons' relationship.

He made his way down the hall, fingers gliding along the concrete wall for balance as he yawned and knuckled at his eyes, heading for the dim light coming from the kitchen. 

Dean was on the floor amid a collection of beer bottles and the un-banded bundle of old photos he usually kept on his desk. He had fallen asleep, chin to his chest, one hand still loosely clutching an old photo of the two of them the summer before Sam left for Stanford. Dean’s arm was slung around Sam’s shoulders even though Sam had already gained a good three inches on him by then, and Sam was turned in to him, lips feathering what might have been a kiss to Dean’s hair. It could also have just been a turn of his head at the moment the camera flashed, but Sam knew better, remembered the moment, one of the last happy ones, the last time he had tried to pry Dean away from John and had very nearly succeeded. Nearly. 

Sam squatted down and touched Dean’s wrist lightly, balanced to swing away if Dean came up fighting. But he didn’t. His eyes fluttered open tiredly, and Sam saw they were still red with the vestiges of recently shed tears. 

‘Hey,’ he said softly, cupping a hand at the back of Dean’s neck and thumbing his jaw in slow, repetitive strokes. 'Gonna give yourself a crick in the neck.'

'Mmm.' Dean turned into Sam's hand for a moment, long enough to graze a kiss across the heel of his palm, then rolled his neck, flinching at the already ache in the muscles, and pushed away from the cabinets. He took in the empty bottles, the strewn photos on the floor where they'd slid from his grasp, eyes lighting on the one of Mary cuddling baby Sam to her cheek with Dean to his other side pressing a kiss to his downy soft head. He sighed tiredly. 'Guess I dozed off.'

He made to collect the photos, but Sam reached and caught his hand. 'Dean? What're you doing in the kitchen floor?'

Dean stared down at Sam's fingers, turned his hand over so he could hold them tight in his own. 'Dunno, Sammy.'

'Dean…'

Dean shook his head and shrugged, still not looking up. 'I just…needed a minute? I guess.'

Sam shifted, settling down on his butt on the cold floor. 'You doing okay?'

'Yeah, 'm fine,' Dean said automatically.

Sam scowled. 'Not fine,' he countered. 'You're in the kitchen _floor_ , dude. We have rooms. Lots of them.'

'Yeah, I know.' Dean pulled Sam's hand in closer, flattened it against his palm and began methodically tracing his fingers up and down, lingering at the joints, circling his thumb over the myriad tiny scars that had collected on his little brother's skin over the years. 'I guess I didn't want to be found.'

Sam leaned in closer, put a hand on Dean's thigh and rubbed back and forth in time to Dean's stroking of his fingers, and asked gently, 'Why not?'

Dean shrugged again, his eyes straying back to the photographs on the floor. He swallowed, throat clicking dryly. 'I don't know her, Sammy.'

Sam's heart clenched at the soft, broken sound of his brother's confession. He squeezed Dean's thigh, tightened his fingers to grip Dean's hand hard. Dean slumped a little against the cabinet and closed his eyes, tipped his head back. 

'I just don't…know who she _is_.' He sounded tired, frustrated and defeated.

'She's…mom,' Sam said tentatively. 

Dean rolled his head back and forth against the counter edge. 'I know. I _know._ But she's not…'

Sam nodded silently and reached to pick up one of the pictures from the scattered pile. It was the one of Mary with her arms around a four-year-old Dean, her cheek pressed close to his, and a wide smile on both their faces. It was one of the ones he had chosen to try and drag Dean back from the edge when the Mark had its teeth set deepest. 

'No,' he said quietly. 'I don't suppose she really ever was.'

Dean opened his eyes, turned them on Sam's sympathetic face, and a tear slipped from the corner of his eye. 'No, I guess not.'

Sam squeezed Dean's hand again and rolled forward onto his knees. 'Come on, let's go to bed.'

Dean hesitated for a second, still staring at the photo of himself and Sam that he'd kept in his fingers even in sleep. 'We're not gonna let it…' He broke off and looked up at Sam, eyes wide and uncertain like Sam so rarely saw them. 'Are we?'

Sam bent and pressed a kiss to Dean's mouth, soft, gentle, flesh against flesh. Nothing more than comfort and warmth, and Dean pressed back, a small, broken sound escaping his throat that Sam thought he probably didn't even realize he'd made. He broke the kiss then, cradled Dean's face close so their foreheads touched. 

'No. No, we won't.' He spread a hand over Dean's heart, counting the beats like he had so often when he was young and it was the safest sound in the world to him. 'Now, come to bed.'

Dean breathed, nodded once. 'Okay, Sammy. Okay.'


End file.
